


Contract Killer

by aramina



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Sorry Not Sorry, Spoilers for Vault 81
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:41:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5401637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aramina/pseuds/aramina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An introspective look exploring why my Sole Survivor makes the choices she makes. And sometimes appears to have a split personality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contract Killer

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the Silver Shroud quest, but has no spoilers. Takes place before talking with Valentine about your missing son, because I do quests randomly, so was level 25 before I ever even learned about Kellogg.

It's the year 2077 and you have a beautiful house, with a lovely little yard and a white picket fence. You have a husband you adore, and a son that you would do anything for. And then you hear on the television that there are confirmed reports of nuclear detonations in Pennsylvania and D.C. and you're terrified because your world is falling apart. The Vault-Tec rep had been by not 20 minutes before, said that all you had to do was finish the paperwork, your family had a guaranteed spot due to your husband's military service. You thank God for a moment that your husband is already holding your son as you run out the door. And you run, truly run, harder and faster than you ever have before. Before you know it, you're there, and there's so many people, and they're all trying to go in, but they're not on the list, but it's okay because your family _is_ on that list. And as you're lowered into the vault and you see the bombs go off, you think that it's going to be okay. That you'll be safe now.

You'll never be safe again.

See, Vault-Tec were never the upright humanitarian company that they portrayed themselves as. They said the vaults were to protect us, to keep us safe in the face of nuclear devastation. But it was all a big lie. The vaults were all experiments. Each vault was different, but no less horrifying. I've been to three different vaults and they were all just as bad just in different ways. Vault 81 was the one that on the surface actually had noble goals. They aimed to wipe out disease, make life better for mankind. It's just that their methods were to design super-viruses and utilize human experimentation until they'd managed to breed a populace that was immune to everything they could cook up. Vault 114 was to be a social experiment. They marketed the vault to the upper crust of the city, told them it was a luxury vault for the elite. What the residents got was multiple families cooped up in single rooms, with no amenities to speak of. What the people who were used to running things got was having to answer to someone who was pathologically paranoid of all authority figures. And my vault? Vault 111? We were an experiment in the long-term effects of cryogenic suspension. They told us it was decontamination, that we'd soon be led to the rest of the vault and introduced to the rest of our lives. We were all so terrified we didn't have a clue.

The scientists thought we were lucky.

It would be easy to say that the next time I woke up it was to a brand new world. I walked out of the vault and only found ruin. A world where bottlecaps were now currency, where giant insects were common place. A world where people talked of ghouls and they weren't just telling ghost stories. A world where radiation was suddenly everywhere, but people were still trying to rebuild. A world where you have to walk everywhere and most people you meet will just try to kill you. But see, it wasn't that simple. And that was actually the second time I woke up. The first time I woke up, it was to see my husband, right across from where I was still trapped, coughing and confused. It was to see a man shoot my husband in the head when he refused to hand over my son, my beautiful baby boy. It was to watch that man take him and walk away. And the worst part? I don't even know when that was. It could have been 10 years after the bombs, it could have been 200 years after the bombs. I woke up as the only survivor in a vault full of corpses, with the knowledge that my son may have been dead for a hundred years already.

But I'll do whatever it takes to find out the truth.

You wanted to know why the General of the Minutemen was here to kill you. What could convince someone known as the people's savior to accept a contract to kill a helpless person like you. See, finding someone when you don't even know their name, how old they are, if they're even still alive. It's not easy, and it's definitely not cheap. I'm sorry, you know? But one bullet and 500 more caps to try to find my son with? It's not really much of a question, not for me.


End file.
